Hi Tumnus,
Finally got around to trying the new bluez-zaurus packages, and it works! I deinstalled the old bluez-zaurus, susp-resume-bluez and bluez-csr-serial packages (after carefully making copies of all the files involved so I wouldn't lose my hacks - I used 'ipkg files ...' to help with this).
I installed the new bluez-zaurus package, copied my previous /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf and /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf back, and everything worked! (Pairings were still OK because this procedure doesn't touch /etc/bluetooth/link_key.) The name of the card now correctly appears when inserted or when I tap the eject icon. More importantly, when the Z is suspended, I only have to do a 'cardctl resume', and after a second or two, 'hciconfig' shows that the interface is up again - this is a real advance over the previous state of affairs where the interface stayed obstinately down unless I did '/etc/rc.d/init.d/bluetooth stop' followed by '/etc/rc.d/init.d/bluetooth start' . Unlike sornett, I didn't have to do an eject/insert to get this to work.
I haven't tried the new susp-resume scripts yet, because being paranoid I would rather leave the card suspended and explicitly enable it when I need it My own scripts are pretty trivial now - a one-liner to start using the card, and a couple of lines to shut down any running PAN's before suspending the card when I have finished.
Many thanks to you and Maslovsky for sorting this out,
P.